We have decided to institute a few changes in the rules and format for the quarterly championship, as well as rules for winners of other prizes.
First, regarding winners of prizes (weekly, monthly, etc.): while you can choose to remain anonymous on your public profile, you will not be eligible to receive a prize unless you have completed the following parts of your profile (which you can keep private):
On your Account-Personal page, provide your real and full name, as well as the country in which you reside. Then complete at least one of the three "My Website" fields with your LinkedIn account, professional website and/or other webpages that identify you and your profession. Your company website, combined with an email address in the same domain, is acceptable.
On the Account-Professional page, tell us the name of the company for which you work, the university you attend, or whatever is appropriate in your case.
Bottom line: we want to make sure that the players who win prizes are "real people" and not duplicate accounts, team efforts, or anything else. Of course, we can't stop you from putting in "phony" data, but we remain confident in the honesty and integrity of our players.
Second, regarding the quarterly championship:
1. The above rule applies to everyone who wishes to participate in the championship. In other words, even if you qualify by ranking, you will not be able to play in the championship without completing the minimal elements of your profile listed above. Only "real people" can compete!
2. Everyone will play in the championship at the same time. We will no longer offer multiple times at which it can be taken. We realize that this could cause hardship for some players (I'm thinking about the Pacific nations mostly), but we figure that if you are sufficiently honored and excited to be in the championship, you'll make it work.
In all cases, if a player does not provide the necessary information their status will be set to "Not Ranked" for the appropriate quiz.
We haven't finalized the time for the championship yet, but since most players are in the US and in Europe, we expect to aim for the end of the work day in Europe, late morning in the US.
Thanks once again for your dedicated play on the PL/SQL Challenge site. We will be unveiling new features in the coming months that will make it an even better at helping you become (more of) an expert in Oracle technologies.
Warm regards,
Steven Feuerstein
The PL/SQL Challenge (www.plsqlchallenge.com) offers a daily quiz on the PL/SQL language, through which thousands of Oracle technologists demonstrate and deepen their knowledge of PL/SQL. This blog contains posts by the PL/SQL Challenge founder, Steven Feuerstein, as well as comments from players.
